“We believe that everyone in Canada should have access to high quality health care,” says Dr. Danyaal Raza, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, in Toronto. “And that to me — it’s strange to say it — but it’s this piece of public policy that’s an embodiment… Read More Defending Public Health Care: Dr. Danyaal Raza Speaks Out
Stand Up and Speak Out “On the one hand, I am a librarian and, as such, I am professionally committed to freedom of speech and bringing forward a broad range of viewpoints in the library,” says Maureen O’Reilly, president of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union (Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 4948). “However, we… Read More When Hate Goes Public
When international student Michaela Cavanagh received her first paycheque from her job as a server in a Danish restaurant, she realized 37 per cent of it went to the state. Compared to the typical Canadian income tax rate, this amount seems ludicrous. But Cavanagh’s hourly wage is 128.64 Danish Kroner — approximately $25 Canadian dollars.… Read More Power in a Union: Lessons from Danish Labour
As a child, Janice Gairey looked up to labour organizers. Literally. In the 1950s, when Gairey was growing up, her father, James Desmond Davis, sat on the board of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. “It was a time when they wouldn’t accept Black workers into the labour movement,” she says. “So they had to… Read More Moving Our People Forward: Reflections by Janice Gairey
Winter 2015 People don’t understand,” says musician, singer/songwriter and community activist Faith Nolan. “They think labour is two old white guys hammering a nail who want more money and to work less. They don’t see that those two old white guys, along with white women and brown and black and yellow women and men, are… Read More Women of Labour and the Arts: Talking With the 2014 Min Sook Lee Award Winners
December 2014 On Saturday, September 6, the Toronto & York Region Labour Council hosted the 2014 Aboriginal Workers/Workers of Colour Conference (AWOC) in Scarborough, Ontario. I attended the one-day conference, which included a keynote address by Hassan Yussuff, the first person of colour to be elected as president of the Canadian Labour Congress. Six workshops… Read More Do The Right Thing: Talking with Labour Educator Jojo Geronimo About a New Equity Guide
August 2014 What does it mean to care for another person’s child when your own is far away? What does it mean to exist in a country only as long as you are employed by citizens of that state? What is it called when you work 24 hours a day caring for a family that… Read More Writing Pictures, Drawing Stories: A Caregiver Comic Book
